Jeffrey D. Sachs > Quotes

“History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.”
― Jeffrey Sachs

“We need to defend the interests of those whom we've never met and never will.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs

“The vast differences in power contributed to faulty social theories of these differences that are still with us today. When a society is economically dominant, it is easy for its members to assume that such dominance reflects a deeper superiority--whether religious, racial, genetic, cultural, or institutional--rather than an accident of timing or geography.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“The rich control our politics to a huge extend. In return they get tax cuts and deregulation. It's been and is an amazing ride for the rich.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs

“Similarly, though the United States is one of the world’s richest economies by per capita income, it ranks only around seventeenth in reported life satisfaction. It is superseded not only by the likely candidates of Finland, Norway, and Sweden, which all rank above the United States but also by less likely candidates such as Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Indeed, one might surmise that it is health and longevity rather than income that give the biggest boost to reported life satisfaction. Since good health and longevity can be achieved at per capita income levels well below those of the United States, so too can life satisfaction. One marketing expert put it this way, with only slight exaggeration: Basic Survival goods are cheap, whereas narcissistic self-stimulation and social-display products are expensive. Living doesn’t cost much, but showing off does.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Price of Civilization

“Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. Its an uncomfortable truth.”
― Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“There is no economic imperative that will condemn us to deplete our vital resource base, but neither is there an invisible hand that will prevent us from doing so.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

“Sustainability, or fairness to the future, therefore involves the concept of stewardship, the idea that the living generation must be stewards of the earth’s resources for the generations that will come later. That’s a tough role to play. There is nothing natural or innate about it. We need to defend the interests of those whom we’ve never met and never will. Yet those are our descendants and our fellow humanity. Alas, it’s a role that we’ve mostly ignored till now, to the increasing peril of all who will follow. The”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Price Of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue And Prosperity

“The energy and daring is to resist the noes, until the final yes has been achieved.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs

“world is not a zero-sum struggle in which one country's gain is another's loss.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“La mala salud causa pobreza y la pobreza contribuye a empeorar la salud”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“The Great Rupture At the beginning of the twentieth century, globalization was viewed as so inevitable that some thought war itself was probably passé, and certainly so irrational that no right-thinking leader in Europe would ever take his country to war. In 1910, a leading British pundit, Norman Angell, wrote The Great Illusion, which rightly argued that national economies had become so interdependent, so much part of a global division of labor, that war among the economic leaders had become unimaginably destructive. War, Angell warned, would so undermine the network of international trade that no military venture by a European power against another could conceivably lead to economic benefits for the aggressor. He surmised that war itself would cease once the costs and benefits of war were more clearly understood. Angell tremendously underestimated the irrationalities and social processes that lead to devastating outcomes, even when they make no sense.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“The rich world dominates the training of Ph.D. economists, and the students of rich-world Ph.D. programs dominate the international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which have the lead in advising poor countries on how to break out of poverty.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“Debemos concentrarnos en el punto de partida: ofrecer a los más pobres del mundo bienes tan evidentes como las vacunas, antibióticos, los suplementos alimentarios, las variedades de semillas mejoradas, los fertilizantes, las carreteras, las perforaciones, las cañerías, los libros de textos y las enfermeras. esto no significa convertir a los pobres en seres dependientes de los regalos; es darle los insumos que compenses sus esfuerzos por mejorara su nivel de vida".”
― Jeffrey Sachs, Economía para un planeta abarrotado

“Si continuamos haciendo las cosas como de costumbre, acabaremos padeciendo una crisis social y ecológica de consecuencias catastróficas”
― Jeffrey Sachs, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

“The current situation reminds me too much of the fable of the
farmer whose chickens are dying. The local priest gives one remedy af-
ter another—prayers, potions, oaths—until all of the chickens are dead.
"Too bad," says the priest, "I had so many other good ideas.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“Demasiados de nosotros pensamos "Que La Paz" es imposible. Demasiados pensamos que es irreal. Pero esta es una opinión peligrosa y derrotista. Nos lleva a pensar que la guerra es inevitable...”
― Jeffrey Sachs, Economía para un planeta abarrotado

“The Millennials, as a result, are less likely to be divided or even torn asunder by the culture wars of the boomer generation. They will live naturally with diversity. They will accept a more activist government. They will be more attuned to environmental needs. All this points in the direction of the mindful economy, if the healing strengths of the Millennial generation’s tolerance and optimism are mobilized for collective political action. What,”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Price Of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue And Prosperity

“Knowing that an economy is in decline is not enough. We must know why the economy is failing to achieve economic growth if we are to take steps to establish or reestablish it.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“Jamás alcanzaremos el objetivo de convergencia económica porque esta labor se vería frustrada por una catástrofe medioambiental. Muchos ecologistas afirman que, estamos condenados a reducir consecuentemente el crecimiento económico..”
― Jeffrey Sachs, Economía para un planeta abarrotado

“We have entered a new era. Global society is interconnected as never before. [...] I suggest that we have arrived in the Age of Sustainable Development.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Age of Sustainable Development

“sweatshops are the first rung on the ladder out of extreme poverty”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“Basic survival goods are cheap, whereas narcissistic self-stimulation and social-display products are expensive. Living doesn’t cost much, but showing off does.3 For”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Price Of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue And Prosperity

“I'm 67 years old. it took me a long time to grow up to know that almost everything we hear is not true.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs

“La situación actual se parece un poco al chiste que hacían los trabajadores de la antigua Unión Soviética: «¡Nosotros hacemos como que trabajamos y usted hace como que nos paga!»”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“Adam Smith”
― Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime

“Our greatest national illusion is that a healthy society can be organized around the single-minded pursuit of wealth.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Price Of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue And Prosperity

“Una combinación de inversiones en sintonía con las necesidades y condiciones locales pueden permitir que las economías africanas escapen de la trampa de la pobreza”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“In rural societies, large families are almost always the norm. In urban societies, families choose to have fewer children. This is the crux of the demographic transition, one of the most fundamental of all social changes during the era of modern economic growth.”
― Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime